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Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

arstechnica.com

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Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#161
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess for the immense pressure you get at that depth. However an emergency release would still make sense.

Naval submarine hatches rely on the pressure to keep the hatch shut. The water pressure outside is greater than the air pressure inside. The hatch locks around a sealing o-ring. Escape trunks are sealed off from the rest of the ship and work like an airlock. Deepsea Challenger's outward-opening hatch/egress trunk worked the same way; indeed, its view window was on the hatch.

> Naval submarine hatches rely on the pressure to keep the hatch shut

I don't remember which company it was, but there was an aircraft company that made the mistake of relying on screws instead of pressure to keep the cockpit windows in place.

The windows were installed from the outside with outside screws to hold them in place. During maintenance one of the windows got replaced and the worker accidentally used the wrong screws which were much weaker than the correct screws.

Next flight when the plane got high enough the difference between outside pressure and the higher pressure in the pressurize cabin blew the window out and one of the pilots got sucked out. Someone else in the cockpit was able to grab his legs on the way out and hold on keeping him from falling, although he spent the rest of the flight dangling out the window getting buffeted around pretty severely. The people left in the cockpit were sure the guy dangling out the window was dead, and they were having a hard time holding on, but they didn't want to lose his body and managed to keep him.

They also were having a hard time communicating with each other or with air traffic control because of the noise from the missing window.

They did get down safely, and the everyone's surprise found that the guy dangling in the window was alive, quite bruised, and had frostbite all over his face, but nothing permanent. He made a full recovery.

They redesigned the windows so on newer planes they installed from the inside with inside screws, whose job was now to keep the window from falling into the plane instead of keep it from falling out.

A "wrong screw" accident then might mean losing a window when taxiing or during takeoff or landing or at low altitude, before there is much pressure different between inside and outside. No one would be sucked out then and the noise would be a lot lower. At higher altitudes the pressure difference would be keeping the windows in place.

As I said I don't remember what company's plane had this accident. It was on one of those "air disaster" documentary shows.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#162
post #17

> According to the BBC, the entire sub is bolted shut from the outside, so even if the vessel surfaces, the occupants cannot escape without outside assistance and could suffocate within the capsule. Why is the submarine bolted shut from the outside?

Is there enough room inside the sub to turn a long enough wrench to apply the appropriate torque?

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#163

With all the talk about failure modes of carbon fiber, the scariest part of this article is the photo of the display and light held up by screws drilled into the side of the pressure vessel.

Yeah, I had exactly the same thought! If it’s a single hull and not a double hull or something, and that’s the actual inside of the hull we are seeing, how the fuck is that safe? Someone uses too long of a screw and bow you have what, 400 atmospheres of pressure pushing against the presumably sharp point of the screw?

Strain monitoring built into the hull only helps you if you can surface in time once you notice a problem, and not at all if it is a catastrophic failure.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#164
post #16
post #3

The US Navy uses an Xbox 360 controller in active service [0] Mass market has a lot of R&D to leverage so it makes sense. Nothing to say this is the cause of the fault and probably going to be more reliable than something hand rolled. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/19/16333376/us-navy-military...

I personally believe using mass market makes sense. I don't understand the criticism I've seen on this website for using off the shelf controllers or camping lights (what do you expect, an LED strip magically engineered by a large aeronautics firm specifically for the sub? and what would that change?). That being said, the difference between a Microsoft controller and a third party is that Microsoft very certainly di…

Logitech is a "cheap third party"?

I like MS hardware, but my goodness, calling Logitech that is clearly missing something in the accuracy department. Logitech is way more experienced at making and selling input devices than MS.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#165
According to the NYTimes, OceanGate refused to undergo any sort of external audit/certification process [0]. I would imagine using an off the shelf, cheap controller would have been one of the first things to be flagged. Makes you wonder how many other critical components did they skimp on

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/20/us/titanic-missing-s...

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#166
The more I read about this, the more it (sadly) reminds me of a bungie jumping accident years ago: the bungie cable contained many separate strands, all ending in loops. The habit of the operators was to hold all the loops together and pass a large carabiner through the bundle, catching a number of the loops.

Until one time they caught few enough (none? I remember "none," but that seems absurd) that the whole thing failed, and the jumper fell straight to their death.

Going down in the ocean to a depth far deeper than any military submarine goes -- I don't see any info online, but I wonder if fewer people have been as deep as the Titanic than have reached Earth orbit -- in something that apparently was put together and vetted by effectively hobbyists seems the pinnacle of lunacy. Apologies to the missing for saying it.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#167
post #91
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally believe using mass market makes sense. I don't understand the criticism I've seen on this website for using off the shelf controllers or camping lights (what do you expect, an LED strip magically engineered by a large aeronautics firm specifically for the sub? and what would that change?). That being said, the difference between a Microsoft controller and a third party is that Microsoft very certainly di…

There's a middle ground between "hardware store crap" and "custom." The aviation industry has plenty of standard interior lighting and environmental control system that's known not to light people on fire or short out or otherwise fail and kill somebody. https://www.collinsaerospace.com/what-we-do/industries/busin... These are still COTS products.

[deleted]

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#168
post #3

The US Navy uses an Xbox 360 controller in active service [0] Mass market has a lot of R&D to leverage so it makes sense. Nothing to say this is the cause of the fault and probably going to be more reliable than something hand rolled. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/19/16333376/us-navy-military...

Yeah, I'm not convinced this is in any way related to the issues. I'm far more concerned with the system that such a controller was plugged into than the controller itself.

Commercial off the shelf pc? What kind of redundancy? How was power and power backup managed?

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#169
post #3

The US Navy uses an Xbox 360 controller in active service [0] Mass market has a lot of R&D to leverage so it makes sense. Nothing to say this is the cause of the fault and probably going to be more reliable than something hand rolled. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/19/16333376/us-navy-military...

> Mass market has a lot of R&D to leverage so it makes sense. Nothing to say this is the cause of the fault and probably going to be more reliable than something hand rolled. Consumer grade products aren't built to last, they are built to be cheap so they can sell them to actual consumers We all know how the military ends up using these consumer grade products; lobbying, aka deep state corruption "if that happens in…

> Consumer grade products aren't built to last, they are built to be cheap so they can sell them to actual consumers

They are so cheap you can carry a lot of spares. Controllers get pretty well abused by gamers, so they aren't exactly fragile.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#170
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting they use the controller to steer the periscope, not the sub. A component failure there has a significantly smaller risk to human life.

Oh absolutely and probably with a manual backup too.

Or you know, another $30 controller or two. I know space is limited but it shouldn't be too much to have a little redundancy on controller systems.
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